Major Southeast Asian stock markets posted limited gains on Thursday, with continued appetite for risk assets putting big caps in focus and a strong oil market bolstering demand for energy stocks. The easing risk aversion sentiment, generally supported by earnings optimism for key sectors such as banks, helped keep most regional indexes at their multi-month highs amid only moderate trade volume on Thursday.
Portfolio flows to Southeast Asia have led to stronger regional currencies, including the Thai baht and Philippine peso. The Thai stock market and the Philippines, both among battered markets in the first quarter, reported fund flow reversals after a spree of foreign buying this month. Thai inflows so far this year was 17.7 billion Thai baht ($587 million), the exchange said.
Thailand's benchmark SET index climbed 1.2 percent on Thursday to 1,089.21, a fresh 14-1/2 year intraday peak, on resuming trade after a market holiday on Wednesday. Others eked out smaller gains, with turnover around a 30-day average. The region's smallest bourse Vietnam, bucking the trend, slid 0.3 percent.
Thai analysts have raised their end-2011 target for Thai stocks by a mild 4.2 percent to 1,133, according to a survey of 21 Thai brokerages conducted by the Securities Analysts Association. Southeast Asian stocks outperformed emerging equities, led by a 1.5 percent climb by MSCI index of Thailand against a 0.36 percent decrease by MSCI emerging stock index by 1030 GMT.
Asian shares were lacklustre, with MSCI's broadest measure of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan up 0.03 percent. In Jakarta, profit-taking in big caps erased some market gains. PT Astra International , Indonesia's main vehicle distributor and biggest listed company, eased 0.9 percent and Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom) , the country's top telecommunications firm, dropped 2.1 percent.
Jakarta-based John Teja, director of PT Ciptadana Securities, attributed the selling to technical correction and said the market momentum was positive in the short term. Among regional outperformers, Thailand's biggest lender, Bangkok Bank , jumped almost 3 percent on expectations it would report strong earnings for the first quarter ending March, boosted by high loan growth. Thai banks are due to report their quarterly results from the middle of this month. Malaysian banks gained, with Malayan Banking and CIMB Bank each up around 0.5 percent.
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